Editorial
Boston Globe
May 19, 2018

If you’re waiting for the T — and you’re willing to wait a year for a new test
bus — you might be able to breathe easier.

A new battery-powered bus set to be tested early next year may bring a zeroemission
vehicle to Boston streets and, in the process, help ease the T’s trainand
bus-purchasing woes.

Supported by a federal grant, the T is ordering five 60-foot, no-emission,
battery powered models that will be used to help develop specifications for
the next procurement of hundreds of buses.

Those include replacements for more than 500 diesel buses now in service
that are being slowly replaced by hybrid gas-electric and compressed natural
gas models. There are also all-electric trackless trolleys running in
Cambridge and Watertown and, peculiar to the T, buses for the Silver Line’s
Seaport, Logan Airport, and Chelsea routes, which use a trolley pole for part
of the trip and switch to a diesel motor for the rest.

Diversity is usually an asset, but not necessarily when trying to acquire buses
or train cars. As Henry Ford proved a century ago, mass production lowers
prices and speeds up delivery time, and a one-size-fits-all model is far
preferable to boutique custom-made vehicles. The T has no end of those;
different dimensions in tunnels and station heights mean that Red Line
trains can’t run in Orange or Blue Line subways, regardless of paint schemes.
Green Line trolleys are a different species altogether, and there are numerous
varieties of buses on the road running on different power sources.

That could change, and bring a new bus standard to Boston, if the battery
buses shine in their test, and there’s little reason to believe they won’t. Seattle
last year ordered 120 of them, and they’ve been in service around the world
for nearly a decade — including in Changchun, China, coincidentally where
the T’s new Orange Line cars are being partially manufactured.
There are some issues to work out, such as infrastructure for charging
stations, and though it’s hard to imagine a downside, there are trade-offs.
The trackless trolleys are highly popular, even beloved, in Cambridge and
Watertown.

Like rail tracks, the overhead lines could symbolize a commitment to transit
investment in an area that makes it impossible for the T to change the route
capriciously. But few can imagine the T unnecessarily provoking the ire of
Cantabrigians by relocating the routes. And as quaint as the trackless trolleys
may be, sentimentality shouldn’t be the final determinant of transit policy.
The battery buses could bring better buying power to the T and cleaner air,
which is priceless. With this test, the T is headed down the right road.